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Gordon Brown: pretty words and flowers, poetry and threats
Like his predecessor, Gordon Brown seems unwilling or unable to face up to the consequences of his decisions. When things go wrong, it’s somebody else’s fault. Take the current brouhaha over the abolition of the 10p tax rate:
Brown is frustrated that the focus has fallen on the relatively small number of people who may be worse off under the reform, and believes that most people will either be better off or no worse off.
I suppose it all depends on what you mean by ‘relatively small number of people who may be worse off’ and ‘most people’. Don’t think of the people who are suffering, says Gordon. It’s unfortunate yes, but there aren’t that many and remember: they aren’t you. Blair said much the same as the cluster bombs rained down on Iraqi civilians.
All this is coming from a Prime Minister who said this in Boston only yesterday:
When Christians say: ‘do to others what you would have them do to you’;
When Muslims say: ‘no one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself’;
When Jews say ‘what is hateful to you, do not to your fellow man’;
When Hindus say ‘this is the sum of duty: do naught unto other which would cause pain if done to you’;
When Sikhs say ‘treat others as you would be treated yourself’;
When Buddhists say ‘hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful’;
….they reflect a common truth dear to billions of adherents of those and other religions that is true also of all the great secular thinkers: that we not only cooperate out of need but there is a human need to cooperate; and that cooperation is built on the desire for liberty and the call to justice: respect for the dignity of every individual and our sense of what is equitable and fair.
What are we supposed to think? That they were just fancy words while he showed off in front of Edward Kennedy but the proles back home can stick it? Nice theory, now where’s the practical application, Gordon?
Where is his ’sense of what is equitable and fair’ (when he’s not strutting the world stage, obviously)? We’re clearly not supposed to look on it as self-serving bullshit, so what gives?
It’s the Onion Theory of Electoral Politics. Peel another layer away. And another. And another. This time it’s single people and couples without children and those who care about them. That core Labour vote must be getting smaller all the time.
(See also Philip)
